Hm. I have access to a cell phone now for the time being. But now I feel bad giving out the number because I haven't called anyone except S*phie in the past two months (I didn't tell her I left San Francisco). I left S*die a message once but then never followed up and completely missed contacting her during her couple weeks that she was out on this coast. I haven't given my parents' number to anyone, so no one has been able to call me even if they wanted to. In other words, I've been completely remiss in calling people, what right do I have to give out this cell number, implying they should (or even want to) call me? I think about calling people just about every day, it has just gotten easy and comfortable to not call. Cawl (working on the accent). And I wonder if my attitude towards calling people reflects my feelings about being called. Time to go into self-therapy. OOOOMMMMMMMM. OOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM! I'll have to see how the issue works itself out.

Well, I got confirmation that the chances are that non-Asians don't know how to cut Asian hair. I went to Supercuts, and I was a bit surprised that in Fort Lee, New Jersey, not a single person working there was Asian. I should have turned around and walked out the door. It's a little weird to think that for the past 11 years, I always went to Chinatown for haircuts. That doesn't guarantee a good haircut, mind you, but at least they know how to cut it. And for me, not having a "look" and unable to give any direction or idea of what I wanted, getting a haircut was always hit or miss. The poor, quiet woman at Supercuts with an eastern European accent had no idea what to do with my hair, so she went ultra-conservative and just wet it, combed it down, and clipped a little off the edges through gritted teeth. She basically trimmed it, when I had asked for two inches cut.

I don't blame her. And better to cut too little than too much when you have no idea what you're doing. On the other hand, what's so hard about cutting perfectly straight hair, you dumbass? Shouldn't you know how to cut Asian hair in an area with such a high Asian population? Shouldn't you have been trained? But now I know. Next time I'll go to Palisades Park, where I'm sure there's a Korean place that cuts hair. They won't understand English, but at least they'll know what they're doing. And Koreans - better sense of style than Chinese, so that may be a plus.

The Asian population around here has become predominantly Korean. The Chinese have always been around in smatterings, kind of invisible in the background, running Chinese restaurants, or professionals like my parents. There was never a huge sudden influx of Chinese. When I was growing up, the Japanese were the first group to come in, with Japanese corporations sending workers to New York and housing them in New Jersey. Japanese patients were my parents' bread and butter in the early days since they preferred going to doctors who spoke Japanese, and when presented with a bill, they'll just pay it. Not like the Chinese who'll try to haggle down a damn doctor's bill.

Now it's Koreans, and I can't figure out what's driving the influx, but I was riding down Broad Street through Leonia into Palisades Park, and suddenly it was block upon block of Korean businesses. Koreans everywhere, and my brother tells me they even hired a Korean policeman! That's a pretty big thing in these white suburbs, because it's infiltrating the power structure. If you want to threaten and scare the bejeebus out of the rich white majority, start hiring minority policeman. I'm sure they screened him well.

And all over the area in general are signs in Korean. Bike Masters, the bike shop we went to when we were kids is now Korean run. Now I know what it feels like to have a completely foreign group move into the neighborhood, and it's cool. I don't know what the hell is wrong with Americans, or any established group, and xenophobia. When the Japanese moved in, it didn't feel like a completely foreign group since my parents spoke Japanese to us when we were kids and we watched period dramas and anime on NHK TV on Saturday nights.

I really should be taking advantage of getting to know Korean food.

Brood:
All summer, there's been a rabbit hanging around my parents house in the evening out for silflay. A very handsome bunny, healthy with beautiful fur. Nice ass. Turns out it's a mommy, and two nights ago she was out for silflay with a little handful worth of baby bunny fur with ears in tow. Trouble was that while all mommy wanted to do was silflay on the lovely weeds on my parents' lawn, baby bunny was also after its nummies. So it was a bit of cat and mouse going on with baby bunny trying to get under mommy, and mommy would hop away a few paces to try to silflay in peace. Then after a while, baby bunny would baby hop over and try to get under mommy and the whole process would start over. It went on all over my parents' lawn. Then last night she was out with two little handfuls worth of baby bunny fur with ears. It was so cute I almost plotzed. I watched from the safety of a second floor window. Mmmm, silflay *drool*.

I still haven't gone down to Philly to visit my brother and his baby. I'm not so thrilled about meeting the baby. I know nothing about him, what would we talk about? I read recently an idea that an infant can't discriminate between its self and its surroundings. As synapses are connecting in the infant brain, caused by sensation, the baby itself is all reality surrounding it, and all of reality surrounding the baby is the baby. I don't know if the baby is past that point close to being 5 months old. But I've never been in the presence/reality of the baby, so I was never a part of its self. The thing is, babies don't lie. They're like the ultimate lie detector test of character. And if I meet the baby and the baby doesn't like me, I don't know if I can take that sort of rejection.

USB Driver is up. August 27, 2004 - 6:06 P.M.: Riverside pathway along the Manhattan side of the Hudson River, looking north to the GW Bridge.

After the downer of the pigs crapping on a peaceful Critical Mass ride last night, I'm not sure I'll go to the protest march in Manhattan tomorrow. Not because of that, mind you. It's an amalgam of things that are pissing me off about New York, including new signs on the George Washington Bridge prohibiting cameras, and closure of the catwalk from 9:30 P.M. to 6:30 A.M. Yes, indeedy, we are the land of the free and the home of the brave. Go U.S.A.

I went to most of the protest marches in San Francisco, marches to which I didn't have ride 15 miles, and I always went alone since I didn't have any friends. I always went under the "every body counts" idea. But now I'm thinking, "no, it doesn't". My body not riding the 15 miles to participate in the march really will not mean anything. Even with the noble idea of standing up for what you believe in, you really need to be getting something out of it, and riding 15 miles, walking alone along the march route with hundreds of thousands of people, then riding back 15 miles just to add a single body to the march really presses its worth. I would really be doing it solely for the ride, and I've already ridden close to a hundred miles this past week.

I'll wake up early tomorrow and see how I feel. If I feel like a ride, I'll go to the march. If not, I'll get a haircut. Either way I'll have put over a hundred miles on my bike for the week.

Florida's "miscalculation":
This is unbelievable: Bush acknowledges 'miscalculation' about postwar Iraq.

How about a big DUH! It doesn't take above normal intelligence to look at the situation in Iraq before the invasion to figure out what the U.S. military would be mired in. It takes a buffoon of unpresidented idiocy to think the U.S. military could go into that country, remove the power structure, and think that would be the end of it, and that throngs of Iraqis would take to the streets in thankful glee to the Americans like Jews being liberated from Nazi death camps.

It was stupid and naive, and the mad rush and frenzy to invade is unforgiveable now that Bush is admitting "miscalculations". So what did the Bush Administration expect? What do you expect when you bring war to a country? Hussein was a brutal dictator, not unlike the many the U.S. government and corporations are familiar with from decades of supporting them, but he was a dam wall that kept all the other internal power struggles in check. Remove that wall, and the U.S. has to deal with all the now empowered groups who had a beef against Hussein or those that don't think becoming a puppet regime for the Americans is a reasonable alternative. It's not advanced political science.

Making "miscalculations" when you're planning to bring untold suffering to a nation through the scourge of war is more than negligence. It should be a crime against humanity. Yet they cavalierly brush it off by saying, "Oh, we made some miscalculations."

My C drive has been reformatted and I officially lost everything I had on my computer and more. I've got the basics working now and I'm trying to keep things as simple as possible, but I still don't have sound and I can't install the USB driver for my digital camera, so no pics. See! Someone is telling me to stop taking pictures. August is coming to an end, and it's already time for another Critical Mass this Friday. I wonder if any Crit Mass folks will try to organize a supplemental action for the Republican invasion of Manhattan next week.

End of August. When I got here at the beginning of July, I wondered where the beautiful sunsets I remember from my room at my parents house. They're here now. They're a late Summer thing, I suppose. No pics because I can't get the USB driver for my camera to install on my reformatted C drive computer.

I've been watching the Olympics. That Paul Hamm guy, his voice makes me want to pound his lilywhite face. And why does he pronounce his last name like Paul Hom, the Chinese guy? It should be "ham" like Mia Hamm, and ham and eggs. What is this? Germany? I also found that I have little patience or tolerance for synchronized swimming. Yeehaw to the Japanese women who got silver, and those Russians who won gold were hella impressive, but . . . I was really hoping that synchronized swimming was a passing fad.

<thinking>diplomatic, diplomatic, say something diplomatic</thinking>

Zen Mountain Monastery in Mt. Tremper, New York (come on, Google hits!) bit the BIG one!!

*ahem*

That is to say, their style of practice didn't quite conform to what I'm looking for. Most of the people there rubbed me the wrong way. We may be on the same journey, but we are on different paths. When someone asked when I was leaving, I wanted to say that I never really arrived. I needed to go up there, I went up there, I'm glad I went up there, not going up there would have been inconceivable, but the actual being there was pretty useless.

I won't say it was totally lame. There's a reason for everything there, and their practice is undoubtedly effective for what it is (ie, for them). In fact, I bought a book of actual formal teacher-student exchanges that are conducted there several times a year in a public forum. Usually that sort of thing would bug the hell out of me, but I do have a lot of respect for the teacher there (he wasn't there while I was there), and even if the exchanges seem flaky and bug me, I do think there is a lot of value for me to look more closely at them.

Anyway, their schedule varies throughout the year, but it was useless for me being there, aside from the fact of going there, because the schedule was all work practice (ie, work meditation). It was all sleep, sitting, eating, and work, strict schedule, and any break between any of those was only long enough to lounge listlessly until the next thing started. So for my purposes, there was no reflection time, no extended walks through the woods, no relaxing, no peace.

And work practice is good in concept, but I found the context in which their work was performed to be no different than secular work. So to me, they call it work practice, but it was just work. Not enough "practice". Maybe that's the European influence in the conception of this monastery. There was an episode of "Northern Exposure" where Chris-in-the-Morning goes off to a Christian monastery to do just what I did - just work and get into the work.

But at this monastery, I don't know, maybe it's a Western obstruction to Buddhism that Westerners need to work on, but we have a problem with power and authority. You place people in a position where they tell other people what to do, and they get carried away, suddenly they think it's their prerogative and mandate to dictate to other people. Things have to be the way they conceive it; they do it right, you're doing it wrong. It creates the duality we're trying to eliminate, even just metaphorically.

I don't understand how telling people what to do or how to do it creates an environment of peace and cooperation. Even at the highest level, on Sunday, the public day, the teacher in charge while the head honcho was away admonished the congregation (it felt more to me like a congregation than a Sangha - a practicing community). Apparently he noticed that not everyone was participating in the chanting, and he said to the "people with their mouths closed" that it was about "full engagement" and "full engagement means participation". Again with the dictating, not only what other people who aren't him are supposed to be doing, but also the mindset. "Full engagement" means moving your lips without thinking what you're saying? What the hell? The way I see it, there are other ways to be "fully engaged" without doing the damn chanting.

Some of the work was pretty miserable, too. You'd think that some consideration would go into what was appropriate for whom. If I went to Deer Park with an eye on becoming a novice, I would expect to be at the bottom of the totem pole and to do the drudge work, but for short-term visitors, you want them on lighter duty, easily supervised, not a lot of responsibility. If the short-term visitor doesn't do something the way the monastery (not the middle management) usually does it, the supervisor does it him or herself to suggest by example. If it still doesn't get done right, it will get done right another time. No firecrackers in the ass.

Ironically, or maybe not so, considering, the most fulfilling moment I had there was scrubbing the stone dining hall floors. That job was pretty miserable, but I'm not complaining about the work. If I was a monk I would have been happy to scrub the whole damn floor day after day; it was visceral, it felt good and you could see the results pretty dramatically. But what was the mindset of the genius to put a short-term visitor on that job? That's what bugged me - it didn't make sense, and not having confidence in the management and functioning didn't make for a peaceful monastic experience, but rather a critical one.

Meh, I didn't go to Maxwell's in Hoboken. It was raining. I could have driven, but while I was there yesterday, I didn't check the parking situation. Besides, I'm avoiding driving at almost all cost. That said, I'm driving upstate tomorrow to go to the monastery, so I'll be gone until next week. After I get back, I still have to see if I can get my computer on life support. Need new Earthlink software to try to get internet back up.

My brother needs what used to be my car every Sunday this month for sailing. So I'm driving upstate in his car - a red 1988 Porsche 944. I hate driving it, not because it's a tacky expensive sports car, but because it's stick. I can get by with driving stick, but I'll never be good at it, and I'll never like it. This is all due to my early bad experiences and stress learning how to drive stick - specifically, getting the car moving in first gear. The cars I learned to drive stick on, including this one, were all really hard to get into first gear, and the memory of that anxiety of not being able to get the car moving and stalling out in the middle of traffic remains to this day. I'd probably be fine and a proficient driver of stick shift if it weren't for the anxiety and muscle memory that I might not be able to do it, that it's not a sure thing.

I remember the first time I did feel like I got the hang of driving stick. It wasn't in a Porsche or an ancient MG Midget or a likewise ancient Alfa Romeo. It was in a friend's Toyota minivan on the streets of Manhattan. If only I learned on a Honda or a Toyota.

Speaking of anxieties, I'm scared of spiders. I've been forcing myself to get over the fear by drawing on the realization that all living beings are equal. I haven't been tested in a while. My apartment in San Francisco was pretty spider free, and I've yet to come across one walking across the ceiling here in New Jersey *scans walls and ceilings of room* *whew*. What we do have here in this house are centipedes - the large ones (up to two inches long) with big spindly legs that move in concert and scurry across the floor like it was an Olympic event.

By any stretch of comparison, these centipedes should creep me out as much as spiders do. But they don't. They're fast, they look hairy, and those legs! Ugh! But every few days I'll see one, and if it surprises me I'll jump, but then I'll go about capturing it in a cup and flinging it out the window (for karma's sake I hope they're fine with the two story drop) into the bushes below. I won't kill a spider either if I find one. I'd probably go through the same steps, but I'm pretty sure that afterwards I'd be shaking involuntarily like a leaf.

I wonder if part of the difference is the metaphor of the web, the web of illusion, getting caught in a web. Maybe I was a fly in a long series of previous lives. *shudder* I shouldn't wonder that the experience of getting caught in a web, seeing a spider approach you and wrapping you up in silk, and then sucking the life out of you is something that might carry over into other incarnations. I prefer the metaphor theory.

It still perplexes me that I'll go on what seems and feels like a major ride, but doesn't even measure up to near 30 miles. I'm getting the hang of Manhattan riding, but tomorrow there's a show at Maxwell's in Hoboken that I want to go to, so I decided to check out the rideability to Hoboken. Mapquest plotted a route that goes on the Turnpike and was 15 miles, so the more direct bike route would be less than that.

It was definitely a rideable distance at 11.25 miles to Maxwell's, and the route was pretty good except for the bike-unfriendly River Road through Edgewater. I've resolved to not hug the side of the road, but to ride an extra bike width into the road to force cars to slow down and move into the left lane to pass, but to also be accomodating when appropriate.

Hoboken blew me away. When they said it was gentrified, I did not envision the cute little treelined roads and beautiful brownstones. Personally, I don't believe that there has been such a big change in Hoboken, I bet it was always more or less like this, but when the buzz got out about it, there went the rents. But I don't really know. I can't say with any certainty that I'd ever been in Hoboken before.

And Maxwell's, I guess, is the main club for national acts in Hoboken. It didn't look like much from the outside. It looked like a restaurant. I think TFT, Fontaine Toups' (ex-bassist/singer/songwriter from Versus) new band, has played there. And isn't Yo La Tengo from Hoboken? Weird. The show tomorrow night is the "Asians in Indie Rock" show, which I didn't even know was going around. I think this is the second one. It'll be in New York later this week with Ida in the line-up, but I'll be at the monastery.

I stopped off at White Castle on the way home. Anyone know a Harold and/or Kumar who wants to go? I just can't believe that these distances, which aren't all that long, are such an ordeal.

I decided against Philadelphia today. It didn't clear up by 9 o'clock, and I overslept and didn't wake up until 11:30 anyway. In fact, it's still drizzly out at 2:15. I called my brother to tell him I wasn't going and it was either way for him, too. He's got a baby to take care of and a wife preparing for her Boards. Besides, I don't know what we'd have to talk about. Which is odd because I was trying to avoid going to visit with my parents, but now I don't know why I'd go without them.

So now I don't know when I'd go to visit. I'm going to be at the monastery from Tuesday to Sunday. My parents are going to Philadelphia on Wednesday and probably think I'll go with them since I haven't told them I'm going to the monastery yet. The weekend after that has tentative plans, but it's possible. The weekend after that is September, and if I'm still around, I'm not going to miss what might be my last chance to see the Panorama steel orchestra competition at the West Indian American Carnaval in Brooklyn.

But that's looking too far into the future. Today, I'm watching Puerto Rico dominate USA in basketball at the Olympics. What a feel-good underdog moment. They say Puerto Rico isn't a medal contender, but they're playing brilliantly, especially a guy named Arroyo. And NBA basketball players - what a bunch of arrogant, overpaid, undereducated, ghetto punks. When's the last time you heard someone from the NBA say something more intelligent than "aiiight"? Michael Jordan? Larry Bird? USA will probably win gold, heck they can still even come back in this game, they have the moves, the talent, and mental focus potential (ego), but big deal. The way Puerto Rico has been playing - that's excitement.

Here's Charley! It just started raining, but it's expected that Charley, already downgraded to a tropical storm, will not have much impact in the New York tri-state area. Charley is supposed to be cleared out by tomorrow morning, at which time I will decide whether roads and traffic will be normal enough to drive down to Philadelphia to visit my brother and his baby. I'm still a little creeped out about having a nephew. And my brother didn't make going down any more attractive by waffling on while giving me directions to his place.

From my relative position, he becomes completely subjective. He simply loses all knowledge of whatever knowledge I might or should have of Philadelphia from previous visits. So he's describing Rte. 676 going through central Philly, how it looks like it's underground, but it's open air, as if I've never been on it before. He took 15 minutes giving me directions that he should have been able to do under 3. "You'll come up the ramp and you'll see the station - you know the station, it was the one in 'Witness', you remember the movie 'Witness'" (uh, not really). So I had to filter through what I thought was important and what was just waffling in his effort to be helpful and meticulous. Unfortunately, his attention to detail is not going to help me from not getting lost, if anything, I'm now expecting to get lost.

He could have been much more helpful by relating street names that I should be familiar with from going to his old place. He moved earlier this year, but I think his new place isn't all that far from his old place, and he mentioned streets that I recognized, but didn't mention them in relation to what I know. So I was pretty confused writing down the parts of his directions I deemed most relevant.

*sigh* And my computer died last night. It's on life support now, and there are still some files I might be able to recover if I can get Internet working and my CD burner, which actually hasn't been working for several months. Then I'll try re-installing the operating system to see if there's any life or hope left.

I'm borrowing my brother's laptop for a few days before going to the upstate New York monastery from Tuesday to next Sunday. And if I'm going to head off to a monastery for reals soon after that, I shouldn't even be thinking of buying a new computer, right? I'm thinking right.

Remember back in the day when your computer would crash, or your father re-installed the operating system without telling you, and you lost all your files and data, and you freaked out in shock and panic? I remember when my first computer died. That empty feeling. That jaw drop. That disbelief. Now, it's just 'eh', because you knew it would happen eventually. Really important stuff you managed to wisely backup, but the stuff that is lost is just lost. Even if I lost all my photos, which I'm not sure I have, they're still there, it's just a matter of whether I can get them off that computer, it wouldn't be such a big deal. If I had sentimental photos, which I don't, I would have backed them up, but all the photos I have are documentary and aesthetic. With digital, I just continue to shoot documentary and aesthetic pictures and it's no big deal if the old ones are gone.

But if you're at all worried, you should go back up anything that's important now. So go.

*SIGH*

I've been in a blog funk lately. A blunk. A b-funk. Ha, I'm actually listening to P-Funk now and was wondering if George Clinton will ever remix and remaster these recordings. I think he mixed records to be heard through 70's era car stereos and boom boxes. They sound terrible through a good stereo system. All midrange, no low end. And that's through my EQ, which scoops out the mids and boosts the low and high ends. Isn't funk supposed to be about booty-shakin' bass?

I haven't been doing much lately. Went sailing with my brother on Wednesday just for the experience. The yacht club culture is an interesting one, and it's exclusive because it costs a lot of money, but the people are alright. I guess most of "the people" (whatever group) is alright, depending whether you're on the inside or the outside. But the yacht club thing is something I wouldn't otherwise touch. It certainly wasn't "me".

Maybe that's what the funk was. Last night I ended up going out with my brother for a night in Manhattan with "his" group of people. We saw "Blue Man Group" which was pretty awesome, but hanging out with those people was just so depressing. Good people, no doubt, but just not "me". How they could talk so endlessly on about food and restaurants exclusively was astounding in itself. I just politely observed the conversation, trying not to embarass my brother. I was in soul shock after I got back to my parents' house. What a waste I would feel my life would be if I lived like that, but I wouldn't feel it was a waste because that's what I would be. And the amount of money people spend in Manhattan was not a small part of what was so depressing. I'm not spending any money because my brother ends up covering me, but just the feeling of being part of the expenditure - stupid spending, really - was depressing. It seems Manhattan is just obscenely expensive.

Tonight was better.

Several weeks ago, I met a couple on the line to see "Zatoichi" and we exchanged email addresses. My brother also met them, so the "his group"/"my" group dynamic is being taken for a louie. They aren't "his" friends or "my" friends, but I'm much more particular about the people I feel comfortable hanging out with, while my brother is much more open and accepting. So, I don't know. I can hang out with them independently, and I can hang out with them with my brother, and the dynamics will just shift accordingly.

Tonight I met up with them for the Sahara Hotnights show at the Bowery Ballroom. Now the Bowery Ballroom is "my" type of venue. My brother has seen shows there, and he thinks he's hip to that, but if I wasn't his brother, I would think he was a fucking dork (alright, alright, I'm an indie snob). And I didn't mention the show to him until late, because I live in a (apparently minority) culture where you go see a band because you're a fan. You don't go to see a band you've never heard of, and I know my brother has never heard of Sahara Hotnights, and I have good reason to believe that he wouldn't independently like them if exposed to their music, either recorded or live. His taste in music is a fucking dork!

When I mentioned the Sahara Hotnights show to this couple, I guess I led myself to believe they knew them. But they didn't, they just went to the show because it was something to do, so it would have been all the same if my brother went. But I'm glad he didn't, because it made tonight an all "me" night. Instead of him driving us into Manhattan, leaving it up to him to deal with parking and New York, him paying for everything, I rode in on bike, had a natural un-self-conscious conversation, paid for everything myself, did everything the way I wanted to, and rode home on bike. And for the first time in a while I felt like myself.

Riding into Manhattan was another kick in the ass. I didn't take Riverside Drive this time, but hopped straight onto Broadway and took Broadway all the way down to the East Village, about 16 miles total. Riding in Manhattan fits my riding style perfectly - fast and aggressive, but also mindful and not stupid (I wouldn't go so far as to call it smart). I rode the same way in San Francisco, but it's like that was just training for this. I took my old school Fuji 12-speed road bike, hopefully an unattractive theft target, which was suitable for flat Manhattan, and neurotically trippple locked it outside the Bowery Ballroom - hey, let all the non-neurotic people have their bikes stolen.

Sahara Hotnights kicked so much ass. I saw them at Slim's in San Francisco, but there was a bunch of frat boy jocks who annoyed everyone within a 2 mile radius just by being themselves. I'm in love with the AC/DC-esque rhythm section. The bassist is so incredibly cool (and cute), and the drummer plays like how I think I played, but a lot better. She also has long blonde hair, which isn't often associated with rocking female drummers (rocking male drummers, yes), but she also had personality and rock star attitude which was totally great.

Afterwards, I didn't even think of taking the subway back uptown, and rode the whole way back, finding the river side path along the west side, and that made my night. It was just gorgeous riding right along the river, with unlighted sections that felt like flying. It was a cool night, perfect for riding, and call me crazy, but I love the stench of polluted waterways. OK, it wasn't that bad, but the Hudson River certainly doesn't smell good. The path went all the way up to 133rd St, where I had to get back on Broadway up to 177th St. The blocks are small, so it feels like going up in 5 block increments, and 45 blocks goes by pretty quickly.

I thought I had left flakiness behind in San Francisco. Ha. I sent an email to the monastery up in upstate that I visited last month, inquiring about week-long residential practice/training and said that I was interested in coming up for a week. I told them my background to give an indication that I'm serious and know what it entails, and they told me they'd send down the information. A week later I received the information they sent, and it says that I should email them for an application if I was interested in staying for a week. They certainly are not helping my dubious opinion of Japan-centric U.S. monasteries.

No harm done, but baseline common sense and communication, what in my original email indicated that they shouldn't send an application with the other materials in the first place? You don't need to know what I wrote in my original message, because I can tell you in no uncertain terms: nothing! Since they're all Japan-centric, I'm sure they understand baka! I sent a much more formal email requesting an application. They got it to me much faster, although I don't think it was related.

I've been listless and tired lately. Very strange. Maybe my body is still getting used to the heat and humidity, regardless of how much I'm not complaining about it. I've even gone back to drinking coffee and more than I drank in San Francisco.

I have a massive blind spot in my left eye, but it hasn't mattered much because my brain fills out the missing information. It was really quite interesting earlier today when my brain, for whatever reason - heatstroke, Korean food, dehydration, probably Korean food - stopped filling in the information. I was trying to read stuff and I had to keep shifting my line of sight to catch words, but still that spot where the words faded out made it also really hard for my brain to process the words to understand what I was reading. I tell you, it was fascinating!

All is back to normal and I have a greater appreciation for the wonders of my brain. I got rid of the Korean food in the meanwhile, couldn't hold it. I haven't had that much chili in such a long time and might have to get my resistance back up by going for more Korean food (so good). It was worse than being drunk because it was just so incredibly painful that I wanted to be put out of my misery. Well, the way my mind works it was more like "If this is what dying is like, I don't want to die!" But then after it passed several excrutiating, delerious hours later, I was back to rationalizing that death, itself, probably isn't that horrible.